[From today's "5 Best Columns from The Atlantic Wire":]
Stephen Wall on Pope Benedict's Irrelevance As the Pope makes his way to Britain this week, the Financial Times contributor notes that the words and gestures of the papacy are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the modern world. This did not have to be so. After Pope John Paul's death in 2005, the Catholic Church had a critical decision to make: choose a successor who would appeal to non-Catholics, or satisfy the core believers by choosing a conservative steward. They made a "huge mistake," declares Wall, by choosing Cardinal Ratzinger: "He has also proved to be uncharismatic, accident-prone, unable to grasp the extent of the Church’s lost credibility." To have any hope of reaching non-Catholics, the church needs to "accept that it does not have a monopoly on truth, that individuals have their own values, that a changing moral code is a normal part of social evolution." This is not likely to occur, says Wall.
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